So I did my due diligence in researching a web host (J2EE hosts are rather hard to find) and found one that looked pretty good and didn't seem to have anyone too angry at them -- and I like the fact that they were honest enough to say that not everyone had been happy with their customer support but they are growing and are working to fill any gaps.

So I go ahead and get the hosting service, and a few hours later I get a nice email with all the account details and I am off to check it out...


but nothing works. I can't login to anything... no FTP no SSH no SCP no admin console no nothing... its like they gave me the wrong password. All I get is this stupid:

:19638/welcome/">-->

whenever I go to any of the pages etc.

I am really just pissed and I don't really want to be. I just really wanted things to go smoothly. Get the host, upload my WAR, wait for the DNS server to reach zen and then by morning there should be a shinny new web page that I can bill for . But now I have to explain to the customer that I am having some technical difficulties and blablabla... not to mention I am out of the country until next Firday so more than likely it will be a week before thier site gets up (though to be fair I did tell them that I could only work on this on the weekends).


Just mad -- and I HOPE that this host does not suck -- but it is a bad way to start things off.

I can host for you if you'd like, or just check out hostgator, they are cheap and very good! plus 24/7 online tech support.

Do they at least have a user forum where users of the service can talk to one another? Sometimes a host can be slow on servicing, but you can often solve problems faster talking to people on the community boards. Why wait 24 hrs for the host when you get a reply in 30 minutes from other users?

Martyr2,

They don't. That is one of the things I really should have checked for but did not. However the problem was resolved within a few hours so I am happy -- well happy-er.

musya,

Thank you for the offer, for a personal site I might be a little adventurous in looking for my host, but for a customer I really need some place that has the 24/7 tech support and more importantly someone to place clear blame on when the server crashes. As for the host you suggested, it is not a J2EE host -- these are much harder to find and usually cost a little more (especially since I require a dedicated appserver -- well *require* == "really really want").

I have noticed that many of the people in this forum who suggest web hosts do not seem to understand the difference for requirements between ASP/PHP/J2EE -- I often see people recommending hosts that just will not meet the needs of what the user is asking about. (Though just about any host seems to support PHP/MySql which is good but you have to look a little harder to get ASP support, and much harder to get J2EE support).

What I *wish* I could afford was a dedicated host that let me do what I wanted -- because I would also like a SVN host which seems even harder to find -- and I don't think the customer would let if fly if I got a separate service just for SVN (which they would not understand anyway). -- So this will have to be done on the server on my home computer.